> I was reading the book "Denying History" by Michael Shermer and Alex
> Grobman, about holocaust deniers, and came across the name "Tom Marcellus",
> who was at one time a director of the "Institute for Historical Review", the
> leading holocaust-denial organization in the US.

> He is described in the book as a "a field staff member for the Church
> of Scientology who had been an editor for one of the church's publications".

> Does anyone know anything else about this person?

From my Germany FAQ:

11. Any links between Scientology and right-extremists?

a) Tom Marcellus

He was director of the Holocaust denying "Institute for Historical
Review" for over a decade (this stopped 1995), and is also "Patron" of
the IAS, which means he has donated $40,000. In 1995 he had a dispute
with Willis Carto, the finance guy there, involving whether they would
discuss Holocaust denial or other (hateful) topics. It resulted in Carto
being thrown out. Marcellus left after his role was discussed in a
german radio programme (may or may not be related).

"Freiheit" printed this (translated):

On his own initiative scientologist Tom Marcellus organised
a movement against Willis Carto and threw this extremist out
of an organization named Institute for Historical Review, after
he had discovered that this institute, that claimed to have
been founded to correct historical mistakes, was in fact being
used by Carto to propagate the Auschwitz-lie. But Carto is
still controlling the Liberty Lobby and The Spotlight.

But let's hear Marcellus himself, when he speaks about the Mermelstein
litigation: (http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p25_Okeefe.html)

2.The IHR did not accept or in any way agree
with Judge Johnson's ridiculous 1981 "judicial notice"
that Jews were "in fact" exterminated in
"gas chambers" at Auschwitz.

3.The IHR has not retreated one inch from
its well-known position that there is no
credible evidence to support the theory that
Germans allegedly used homicidal poison gas
chambers to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

In an interview on Radio Islam in December 1991, he said this:

And this also added to the impetus, so since that time interest
in this topic has continued to expand and grow because we
caught something here and we started to take it apart, and it's
revealed that this massive, this massive campaign to convince
the Western world of what allegedly took place in Europe before
and during World War II has no basis in fact, and this gigantic
whopper as, as some of us call it here is, is all the more
fascinating because of the fact that, that it is being shown to
be a, a hoax.

http://abbc.com/historia/rami-ihr.htm

There is also a direct link between Scientology and the IHR: some IHR
money went straight to Scientology. The following is a transcript from
the trial LEGION v. CARTO from 1996:

14 Q ISN'T IT TRUE, MR. MARCELLUS, BESIDES THE SALARY
15 YOU RECEIVED FROM THE BANQUE CONTRADE FUNDS, THAT YOU ALSO
16 ASKED MR. CARTO TO DIRECT SOME OF THAT MONEY TO ONE OF THE
17 CAUSES THAT YOU FOLLOWED; ISN'T THAT TRUE?
18 A INDEED. ON TWO OCCASIONS, I ASKED HIM TO, INSTEAD
19 OF MAKING THE CHECK OUT TO ME, HAVE THE CHECK MADE OUT TO
20 F.S.O., FLAG SERVICE ORGANIZATION.
21 Q THAT IS SCIENTOLOGY, ISN'T IT?
22 A THAT'S CORRECT.
23 Q YOU ASKED HIM TO GIVE SOME OF THE FARREL ESTATE
24 MONEY TO SCIENTOLOGY; ISN'T THAT CORRECT?
25 A NO, SIR. I ASKED HIM TO GIVE SOME OF MY SALARY
26 COMING OUT OF THE LEGION ACCOUNT TO AN ORGANIZATION THAT I
27 WANTED TO BENEFIT.
28 Q YOU DIDN'T THINK THAT WAS WRONG, DID YOU?
1 A I'M SURE IT'S NOT WRONG.

http://www.access1.net/lsf/carto/litigation/farrel/961104trial.html

and another, in which Carto gets questioned:

23 Q DID YOU DISPENSE SOME FUNDS TO THE LEGION?
24 A YES.
25 Q HOW MUCH?
26 A ABOUT $750,000.
27 Q DOES THAT INCLUDE PAYMENT OF $73,000 TO
28 MR. MARCELLUS?
1 A WELL, TO SCIENTOLOGY, I GUESS.
2 Q DID MR. MARCELLUS DIRECT YOU TO MAKE THE PAYCHECKS
3 OUT TO THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY?
4 A IN THOSE CASES, HE DID, RIGHT.
5 Q AND DID THAT $750,000 INCLUDE A BONUS FOR
6 MR. MARCELLUS?
7 A YES.

http://www.access1.net/lsf/carto/litigation/farrel/961107trial.html

In June 1998, Marcellus got a personal home page on scientology's web
site:

http://www.our-home.org/tommarceilus/index.htm

b) Fletcher Prouty

Not a scientologist but a so-called "expert witness" in scientology
press releases, who has also connections with Marcellus and Carto.
Scientology brought him up after the Armstrong fiasco - he claimed that
there was a second, real Hubbard file in the navy, because Hubbard had
been a secret agent.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/prouty3.txt

Prouty's topic at the opening session of the 1990
Liberty Lobby Convention was "The Secret Team."
The new Institute for Historical Review's
Noontide Press edition of Prouty's book "The
Secret Team" was released at the Liberty Lobby
conference. Prouty assured the audience it was an
"enormous privilege" to have his book republished
by the Institute for Historical Review, a group,
Prouty claimed, that keeps people "from revising
history." Prouty thanked Willis Carto and Tom
Marcellus of IHR for the "guts and good sense" to
republish his book.

See more on prouty here: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/prouty.htm
Prouty was an advisor on the JFK film and was the model for
the film's character "Mr. X."

Prouty also wrote an "authorized biography" of L. Ron Hubbard:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=088404274X/denniserlichdefeA/

Prouty also wrote about positively scientology religion:
http://www.scientology.org/wis/wiseng/30/30-idx.htm

And Prouty was a "character witness" for holocaust denier Willis Carto:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/holocaust/ihr/part02/faq.html

During the lengthy legal battles surrounding the Mermelstein
lawsuits against the Liberty Lobby and Willis A. Carto, Prouty
and fellow PAC advisory board member Lt. Col. James "Bo" Gritz
were "prepared to testify as character witnesses on behalf of
Liberty Lobby founder Willis A. Carto."
(Spotlight, 10-7-91, 12)

c) L. Ron Hubbard

According to former Scientologist and Hubbard biograph Gerry Armstrong,
L. Ron Hubbard himself subscribed to Carto's magazine "The Spotlight".

d)

Anti-semitism fits into the scientology way of thinking: scientologists
have contempt for victims, because they apply the "overt-motivator"
logic which means that someone who accuses another of a crime did
himself commit a crime (except of course scientologists themselves, they
are allowed e.g. to accuse Germany of crimes). Scientologists also
believe that everyone is responsible for what happens to him. Hubbard
mocks the jews in the book "Introduction to scientology ethics", p. 175:

"I found out that only those who sought only peace were ever
butchered. The thousands of years of Jewish passivity earned
them nothing but slaughter"

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